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#60 Why Tech companies should not deprioritize future readiness with Rainer Karcher

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“Climate activist in a suit”.

This is how Rainer Karcher describes himself.

It is an endless debate between people advocating for the system to change from the outside and those willing to change it from the inside. In this episode Gaël Duez welcomes a strong advocate of moving the corporate world into the right direction from within? Having spent 2 decades in companies such as Siemens or Allianz, Rainer Karsher knows the corporate world well, which he now advises on sustainability.
In this Green IO episode, they analyse the current backlash against ESG in our corporate world and what can be done to keep big companies aligned with the Paris agreement, but also caring about biodiversity or human rights across their supply chain. Many topics were covered such as:

Why ESG has nothing to with “saving the planet”
3 tips to tackle the end of the month vs end-of-the world dilemma
Embracing a global perspective on ESG and why the current backlash is a western world only issue
Knowing the price we pay for AI and how to avoid rebound effect
The challenge with shadow AI and why training is pivotal

And yes they talked about whales also and many more things!

BTW, Rainer will also be one of our 2 keynote speakers at Green IO Munich next week where he will wrap-up the day after having represented SustainableIT.org on the NGO panel as their CSO.

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Learn more about our guest and connect:

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Rainer’s sources and other references mentioned in this episode

Transcript (auto-generated)

Gaël Duez (00:00)

Hello everyone, welcome to Green IO! I'm Gael Duez and in this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one bite at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches, enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability.

Gaël Duez (00:27)

Climate Activist in a Suit When I first read this statement from Rainer Karcher, it immediately resonated with me. How can we move our corporate world into the right direction from within? It is an endless debate between people advocating for the system to change from the outside and those willing to change it from the inside. And today I'm welcoming a strong advocate of the second option. Rainer knows this world well, having spent two decades in companies such as Siemens or Allianz. He founded Heartprint a year ago to keep on advising them on sustainability. Today, we will try to analyse the current backlash against ESG in our corporate world and what can be done to keep big companies aligned with the Paris Agreement but also caring about the biodiversity crisis or the human rights across the supply chain. By the way, Rainer will also be one of our two keynote speakers at Green IO Munich on July 2nd and 3rd, where he will wrap up the day after having represented SustainableIT.org on the NGO panel as their chief sustainability officer.

Gael Duez (01:40)

Welcome, Rainer. Thanks a lot for joining Green IO today.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (01:44)

Thank you very much for having me and thank you very much for the very good introduction. I'm really looking forward, first of all, to meeting all of you, hopefully, who are listening now, and to meet you, Gail, in Munich on July 3rd, which is Munich, which is my hometown. So I'm really happy to be part of that and just looking forward to seeing you all.

Gael Duez (02:01)

Yeah, thanks a lot for this and you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders. I know that because you're playing home. So we expect a lot from you.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (02:08)

And you can, you can. I'm not sure whether I'm able to fulfill, but I'm very much looking forward to at least giving a bit of thoughts and sharing my mind.

Gael Duez (02:13)

I'm sure you will. Thanks a lot for this. And you know, when we were discussing how ESG is delayed from most agendas due to according business priorities in the current times, you were actually very vocal about the lack of business acumen of decision makers doing so. Because according to you in particular in such times, ESG remain a major business goal and executive committees or board should not, and I'm quoting you here, deprioritize future readiness. So there's so much to unpack with this stance of yours, but maybe you could start with explaining what you meant by… and deprioritizing future readiness.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (02:58)

Absolutely with pleasure and thanks for that question. Well, let me just maybe circle back a little bit. And as I've started my combination of IT where my foundation lies, so I'm an informatic person since 1997. So my career started in IT and kept it that way for quite a long time, exactly as I said, more than two decades. And about five years ago, I've started to get into sustainability from a business perspective and combine my private passion for environmental protection and for certain other things with job and with IT. But at that time, there was a very strong focus mostly brought up from Fridays for Future and all the for future type of combinations. And the society, I think, got very much more interested in talking about the topic, which was a good one. And then from my perspective, things happened. It just turned into something which nowadays is called the green left wing woke type of a thing. And once you start using ESG or sustainability as a term, people are, or least the majority of people are like, ⁓ gosh, come on, again that thing and again that talk. In particular, if you go to businesses and if you go to the C suites of companies. And the thing is, ESG was never meant to be a left green, woke type of a thing. It is just something for ensuring the foundation of our future. And if we're talking about future readiness, from a personal perspective, from a company's perspective, from business and from survival, than it is about just being aware of what's going to happen, create transparency of what to expect and have a bit of an ability to predict what you can do and how you can influence things. What I mean on that, bringing that down to ground level is if you own a company, if I just got handed over a company maybe from the fifth or sixth generation back something which was founded 100 years ago. The only thing I'm very much interested in is keeping my business going. And whatever it takes, I need to be ensured that the future and whatever is happening there is something I'm able to either influence or to predict to be able to adopt it. And that means that if, for example, there is someone crazy coming up in the US and raising taxes to 50%, I should be aware of how much influence this will have to my income. If I do have a lot of business which has been made with the US, I should be aware. And I should have a plan B, some kind of a backup plan if things are going to happen, what they're happening. And the same is relevant for anything which could come up from the environment. If there is a hailstorm showing up in three days, if I am a car dealer and I do have 1,000 of cars parked outside, I should be aware of that. And I should have an ability to maybe bring them to a parking garage or elsewhere. If I do have maybe agricultural business ⁓ I'm going to take, I should be aware. If there is a very dry summer to be expected and maybe set up something which is helping to water my plants. Otherwise, I most likely have an issue from a business perspective. So nothing of that has to do with saving the planet or just doing some kind of good stuff and saving animals or insects or anything. No, it has not. It's a very purely business perspective in ensuring that my business is able to keep going.

Gael Duez (06:10)

And how do you differentiate in that case ESG from, I would say, risk management that every good company should have put in place?

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (06:22)

That's the fun thing. There is not that much of a differentiation and there doesn't have to be. So resilience and risk management is something which, at least in exactly the way like you said it, I did work for Allianz, which is an insurance company. So they are very much interested in all that aspect. So resilience plays a crucial role for them. So take their business perspectives, which is indeed just in trying to regulate as little as possible as damages and just selling policies and polices or insurances as much as possible as well. So the business model is at risk if things turn around the other way. So if they have to regulate a lot of damages caused by strong weather results, for example, take the latest example of Switzerland where there was hundreds of households just pushed away from a glacier which just broke. If you are the insurance company and you have to regulate that. This makes you multi-million or even billion worth. Take the example of wildfires which took place in the US, in Los Angeles, same thing there. So if you're an insurer, you have to be aware of the risks which could occur and just then make your business based on that. And that awareness, that risk awareness is exactly what we're talking here as well. So future readiness comes very much with exactly this. But that was the example of an insurance company. If I'm a local small medium-sized company, producing anything for maybe the big enterprises. Those companies normally do not have a view into this. There might be some little, yeah, different sessions depending on what kind of business you do, but most of the small medium-sized companies don't even have a division looking into risks or analyzing them. And that's exactly where Future Readiness comes in from my perspective with very small, very concrete examples, not with 120 PowerPoint slide type of strategy paper, which you need to read through and then still nothing changes. No, tangible results, tangible and grabbable examples of how to make yourself aware of what to expect. And maybe another example, even if I'm a small company and I am the ones maybe producing some electronic components for big suppliers, I do have maybe dependencies from Asia, from electronic goods which are being produced there. So supply chain risks a core. And that is something which to me is a perfect example of the classical ESG. So I have environmental risks, have social aspects like human rights, I'm doing the production cycle, modern slavery and all that things. And I have governance structured things which are, for example, regulations like carbon board adjustment mechanisms. So the term ESG itself, sustainability as a term, might be in a wrong angle in the meantime and being wiped off the agendas. But you change the narrative and if you just change the perspective towards something which is be aware of what to expect and try to find a backdoor plan, try to find something which can help you with diversifying maybe your supply chains. Then we are talking about future readiness from a pure business perspective, nothing to do with saving the planet or doing something for anyone from the green party.

Gael Duez (09:19)

I fully got it and it brings a question in my head because quite often it seems to be for medium sized business, even for big corporation, very strong tension between what should be done to be future ready, but in a matter of years and what must be done to be financial ready for the next quarter report for instance or even just to meet the end of the year from a financial perspective. And this tension I've met it quite a lot with people saying yeah I know that at some point my factory might get into trouble because we might not access water in such a cheap and easy way that it used to be the case before. Yet we know about this supply chain issue and like 90 % of our suppliers are based in Asia. But under the current economical circumstances, we cannot do anything else. How do you answer this sort of not necessarily even a pushback, but just question arising from your clients?

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (10:23)

Yeah, yeah. Well, there is two angles which I always try to come up with. So the first one is depending on the size of your company, you depend on loans from banking and financial industries. So if you invest into new machines, if you have a big project coming up, you need to have a cheap and a very good and affordable loan from banking industries. And I just yesterday read an article that the biggest investment bank from the Nordics plus the European Central Bank already reacted to omnibus. So the current deregulation ideas from the European Commission, so to say, and just simply decline. And they just simply said, well, you can either go ahead with CSRD and with the reporting like it was supposed to be and like it was originally, or you can just count on it that depending on your interest as a company, loans are getting more and more expensive, or you won't even get one. So this is the first reaction I would have. Just simply think about that. If you have even a short-term type of a planning, if you only have a six-month or a one-year perspective ⁓ to look into the future, you still are in trouble if you completely ignore that topic, if you try to avoid thinking of it just based on, well, the European Commission decided to just push it up for another two years. Well, the banking industry does not. They are very much interested in already understanding how future-ready your company is of today.

Gael Duez (11:41)

But it's funny that you're mentioning the banking industry because you know there is a famous hearsay that there is no climate deniers among insurers because the insurance world is perfectly aware of the devastating effects of climate change. But the financial sector and especially the banking sectors comes under much more pressure usually because they still finance fossil fuel expansion plan and the like, and they're not really super clear on how to finance the ecological transition. So it's kind of a surprising example that you provide. And if you could elaborate a bit on it, like, do you really believe that the banking sector is actually now pushing more and more for sustainable practices? I'm really curious about it.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (12:31)

So I'm mixing emotions to be honest. I do know a lot of people out of that bubble and in particular within due to my time in Allianz in the financial sector. So I do know a couple of people even in the largest banks of the world. And yes, for sure, there is a lot of praying water and drinking wine. There is a lot of, yeah, let's just do this and that. And you need to invest into sustainable futures and still. those banks are the ones which are investing the most still in oil and gas, which is our enemy. So therefore, let's be clear on that. But on the other side, from a pure business perspective to those banks, I know from those people that the risk analyzes ⁓ for all of them. And independently, whether they invest a lot or just very little or nothing into oil and gas, all of their risk assessments came up quite clearly. If they put millions into any kind of companies and invest into any kind of companies without a clear strategy, the risk is way too high that they never see that money again. And from that perspective, they will have to change and they will change. Is that something which can happen like a finger flip? It can't. So this is something which takes time. And that's another thing which I've very much learned during the last six, seven years now in the big corporates. If you believe that a 300,000, 500,000 people company is able to be changed within half a year or a year, it can't be. Even if it has to. And even if, yes, for sure, the pressure is incredibly high. This is where, and probably already can now listen to the climate activist and the suit. So this is that mixed and emotion type of a thing, which I'm struggling with each day and trying to find that balance and transport that into a narrative, which has been understood then from the C-level back to your first question, because yes, I know, and I'm the activist here, the windows and the opportunities are closing rapidly fast. And I just listened to Johann Rockström last week in Berlin, who just showed up the graphs of what to expect and that the two degrees won't be something we can expect in 2040 or 2050, no, already by 2030. So it's incredibly increasing at the moment and the rise of the temperature and the loss of species in biodiversity aspects, all of that is dramatically increasing and we should and we have to act the fastest as we can. But on the other side, we lost that opportunity already 15 or 20 years ago. So this is something I could get depressive now and looking back in anger and say, well, we should have, but no, this is not me. So the optimistic person in me as well. Let's do whatever we are able to and let's push it as hard as we can, but still keeping it realistic. circling back to your original question, the second point on that is, well, if I do have a company which completely ignored the aspect of sustainability so far, I always come up with the argumentation, well, then let's start with things where you're even able to save money. So the return on invest is immediately there if you, for example, look into energy efficiency. 90 % of small medium-sized companies never ever looked into an energy efficiency aspect with automation. This is where then the digital comes up and my twin transformation heart beats a bit louder. There is so much opportunities today where you are not even able react manually anymore and you don't have to, but just implement very easy, easy to consume, very affordable solutions to increase energy efficiency. Save energy and so therefore save money as well and get the return on investment quite rapidly. So and this is where you can have a starting point with and based on that define a strategy and a vision for your company and what most people in particular the C level is underestimating is of how many people within the company are already interested in supporting that ideas. So majority of small medium-sized companies I've spoken to in the last 12 months was at the beginning like yeah well you know. This is not a topic for us and nobody speaks about sustainability as a whole. And there is no clear vision and strategy. And I doubt that we just get the approvals from the employees and from operational roles. And they have been all wrong. 80 % of human beings, and that's the average value, are quite well aware of what's going to happen. And 80 % would like to change and take some kind of an influence, but they don't because they don't have the ability to in their day-to-day jobs. If you just grant them a vision and an idea and a strategy and some kind of support, you would wonder as a small medium-sized company of how much is possible to be changed in a very short period of time with all the knowledge, the experience of your employees, of the people surrounding you.

Gael Duez (16:55)

So actually, it's not two points, it's three aspects. The first one being get good financing conditions by being sustainability compliant. The second one is go for savings and cost savings equals energy savings and actually reducing waste most of the time comes with some sort of a cost savings. And the third one is actually please your employees and your stakeholders and your shareholders, maybe, but at least your stakeholders because most of them are more climate aware than you might think so. So that will be your answer to this usual pushback end of the world, end of the months. And Rainer, you mentioned the omnibus law, so maybe for the listeners, and there are many of them not based in Europe, if you could just clarify what it is. But also it helped me ask actually you another question, which is actually a double question. So it's three questions in one, I think I think you're having a hard time with me. I'm sorry with this.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (17:46)

I'm enjoying it lot. I hope that keeps it interesting for the listeners. That's the only thing we would like to get.

Gael Duez (17:56)

Excellent. If you can just briefly explain what is the omnibus situation and how you connect it with the current backlash against sustainability that we see in Europe and in the US, and maybe also because you're a very global person, well connected around the world, how much of the current narrative that we have in the ESG circles or sustainability circles at large is actually a western bias because as far as I'm checking on the news around the world there are a lot of other countries still implementing ESG regulations. seems it's always a bit difficult to assess what is going on in China especially when like me you don't speak Chinese and you don't know the culture that well but it seems that for instance China is pushing a very ambitious agenda on ESG regulation. They're actually quite aware of the biodiversity crisis. It doesn't mean that they're doing everything to solve it, yeah, how much we are just convincing ourselves that the world is now facing a backlash where it's actually Trump and its European followers that are actually doing this backlash. So it's a lot of questions and you can feel free to unpack them the way you want

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (19:08)

I like the global perspective. And exactly as I said, I'm working globally since a long, long, long time. So that I did spend most of my career in global faced companies. mostly had colleagues from all over the world and influenced them from different cultures and from different type of thought and mindset, which I always really

Gael Duez (19:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (19:26)

let's just maybe start unrolling the questions and getting a bit of explanation. So the omnibus is something which came up now, in particular due to the economical crisis which we are facing all over Europe based on the new US administration and all the tariffs and taxes and all the things which he came up with. ⁓ And I'm not further commenting on because otherwise I could get immediately very angry. But let's just stick it with that. Since he's in place, the European Union tried to find ways to support European economies and lower bureaucracy and lower the effort which has to be taken, for example, for non-financial reporting. So it is a quite already established type of a thing to… put yourself into non-financial reporting. It's nothing of just now a year or two. This has been in place since quite a long time for big corporates. So a lot of companies with more than 1,000 employees and 50 million on the revenue do have to report that since already 15 years or even longer. So it just got replaced then by the so-called CSRD, which is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Within that, was, or there are, ESRS, so that's the reporting standards for environmental, social and governmental structures. And that exactly was meant for the next three years to bring it further down to reporting even to companies above 250 employees. So not the smallest ones, not the hidden champions, but companies with 250 employees and more would have been required to report. Omnibus now with the idea to reduce bureaucracy, to make it a bit easier for the small companies was brought in place to just limit to 250 employees company, but to raise that to a 1000 people company. So there was a couple of millions which would not or which are not affected due to that any longer. And it was then pushed by another two years. So not with implementing it by 2025, but 2027, 2028. And this is exactly where the criticism comes from, from my point of view, that with omnibus, things are being delayed at a time where they should not be delayed. Future readiness, as we spoke about already, is being even de-prioritizing companies are not looking into it. Because this is a bit of the typical carrot and stick situation. If you're not enforced in doing, you don't. At least that's the majority of companies who are looking into that. If there is no law in place, which pushes me to do something, then I just simply don't do it. And that's exactly where I think we need to change the perspective and need to come into another angle. And that is which most likely didn't even make it into the news. There is, with coming with Omnibus, so that was a bit of the good part of it, a voluntary type of a reporting. So that's the voluntary standards, which is then meant to support the small companies with creating a very simple and very much slower and smaller type of a reporting to standardize that. So if you're working with a big enterprise, if you are a supplier for a big enterprise, you mostly get sustainability questions anyhow day by day on your table. If you're in tenders, if you try to work together with others, you need to report on sustainability. And the voluntary standards was meant or is meant standardize that, that you don't have to reply to each of your customers in a different way would like to have it in an Excel sheet. The other one as a PDF, the third one as an email. The fourth one would like to have maybe access to your database with an API. So to standardize that, ⁓ Omnibus came up with the voluntary standards. And this is something which I think makes total sense. And in exactly that way, I think if you look at it and keep the standards, keep the reporting for the big corporates where there is a lot of things already in place and a lot of reporting already has been happening for the last two years or at least one year and keep that and bring it more to a standardized way for the small companies. So this would be a bit of the explanation what the omnibus is all about. To your second question, I 100 % agree. We are looking very much on the depriorization and on everything is getting worse and worse over time now from the industrialized Western world. If you go to other parts of the world, if you go to developing countries, if you go to sub-Saharan Africa, they have a complete different view and a complete different perspective on sustainability as a whole. And why? Because they're under pressure much more than whatever we are already. If you go to India, for example, in my former surrounding in Allianz, I had a huge amount of colleagues working in India. So 6,500 of Allianz technology employees are working in Trivandrum in the most south of India and in Pune, which is more in the north. What I found and still find is a lot of passion, a lot of engagement of the people there to really make things happening because they were affected much more than whatever we are. ⁓ And not only from a climate perspective, not only from rising temperatures and the loss of water and strong weather results, but plastic pollution, as an example, if you take plastic pollution, well, we do have a very good recycling system. So what you couldn't see now is that I just ⁓ questioned whether it is a good recycling system.

I'm I just did see a reporting which was science based just two days ago, which was just showing up the recycling quotes in Europe, which are less than 12%. So we are reducing the recycling to a very little minimum and only PET has been recycled. All the rest as it's mostly combinations is not. So if you think we're good in that, we are not. It's just been mostly sold or burned or just dumped somewhere, we just don't see it. And that's a bit of the difference of what it is in India. But back to the question, you said it as well. China, for example, took over a third of the European CSRD. Well, a bit of an adopted wording and somehow a little bit of a different angle. But a third of the regulatories which we came up with for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which is now being pushed away through omnibus, has been taken over from the Chinese government and brought into local laws. And well, I'm not putting, and don't get me wrong now, I'm not putting an autocraty and a society which is ⁓ putting pressure on human rights from every angle and ignoring human rights from a democratic perspective like what we are looking into. I'm not putting that into a positive view, but exactly as you said it. So the depriorization of sustainability and ESG is not at all happening all across the world, It might come up from a different interest. And if you take China, for example, which is the country with the biggest increase of solar and PVs over the last two years, that comes for sure not from a ecological reason, but a pure economical one, because solar is in the meantime, the cheapest way of producing power to the grid as you can get it. And this is exactly the reason why they do it. So there is definitely different type of interests. But on the other side, Like you said, those who are affected, those who are feeling pressure, either on waste or on temperature or a lack of water or lack of biodiversity, if you have to start pollinating plants manually by hand, if you have to have people climbing up trees, pollinating apples and oranges to get the fruit at the end, because there is literally no bees left, no insects left to pollinate in other ways. Then you start thinking and this is exactly what we are still missing and already not given an answer why I think it is what it is. I think we are still way too protected in the Western industrialized world. Still everything is in supermarkets, still everything is somehow affordable, still everything is existing. If I open the tap, there is still fresh and clear water I'm able to drink right out of tap, at least in the majority of Europe. And that is something which I think is a bit of just pushing away the realities of what the world as a whole looks like and the global issues are.

Gael Duez (27:28)

That's funny, it is exactly the word that popped in my head when you were discussing and explaining the global situation that we are still so protected. protected or putting very nicely things under the carpet, as you mentioned for the plastic recycling or downcycling. By downcycling, mean that you use the product to build something with a less quality, so for instance, plastic bottles, they will never be used to make other plastic bottles as the little recycling sign could wrongly advertise us, but more to create carpet or garments or whatever. And I think this would be much more understandable for the the general public, if we were talking about downcycling rather than recycling. But this is a green IT or digital sustainability podcast. And I'd like maybe to zoom in a bit and ask you, how shall tech companies navigate these troubled times and embrace the paradigm that you've just described, starting with future proof. No Sorry. Starting with future readiness.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (28:36)

And future proof is a good one as well, so we can talk about it in both ways. So that's totally fine. So try to visualize a butterfly. A butterfly is only able to fly if both wings are moving. And if there is only one wing, it will immediately drop off. And that's exactly what I try to explain what twin transformation stands for. It's the transformation of, and that's the one wing digital, and make digital sustainable. So looking into your own footprint into the things which are just coming up due to technology. So that's a major energy consumption. Take AI, which just now skyrocketed the energy consumption of data centers all across the world and still keeps going. So I think we are already at 3 % of the world's energy, which is consumed by data centers purely, just data centers. So not everything else for infrastructure, networks, Wi-Fi, whatever type of things, no purely data centers. And this is going to be predicted to go up to maybe even 22 to 30 percent in the next years due to AI because of a massive energy hunger which comes up on that. Same is relevant for water consumption. So all those data centers need to have cooling independent whether they use direct cooling, which is mostly a closed circle or and this is the majority of data centers use cooling on the roofs with chillers, whether it's just water chilled and used for such kind of cooling just have a massive consumption of fresh water. And this is something which we still don't have an answer for. And well, this is the own footprint. If you take materials, if you take the amount of equipment which is being dumped each day instead of circular usage and instead of refurbing the company devices and just handing it to a second life or just ensuring that materials like raw materials ⁓ is being just reused again. of that is the outcome and the own footprint of digital. And that needs to be turned into a sustainable aspect. So you need to be transparent. You need to know how to treat things and sustainability needs to take an influence into that one wing. The other wing is the sustainability transformation or the future readiness transformation. And all of that to get support from digital. What I've experienced in most of the corporates in the past and still, if I look into companies nowadays, there is a lot of manual effort if it comes, for example, to the reporting aspect. what we've spoken about a bit earlier, CSRD and all the non-financial reporting, most of the companies, and I hope that you agree in listening now, still have Excel and SharePoint and PowerPoint and emails and PDFs and whatever type of things as a source and data tool to work with for such kind of reporting. Does it have to be that way? No. There is definitely digital answers. Is AI supported answers, there's a lot of things in automation you can just achieve in supporting your surrounding and your work. And thing is, those people who I met who are in sustainability manager roles, in sustainability head roles, chief sustainability officers, majority of them is non-IT people. So they do not have even an idea how to make things different than with Excel or with PowerPoint or anything else. So what it needs is digital and IT people need to support those people because none of them is in such kind of a sustainability position to just do non-financial reporting. None of them is interested in day by day shuffling Excel sheets and counting numbers. All of them would like to take influence and make things happen within the company surrounding and I am able to support them with digital. We are able, for example, in product cycles. So taking another example, Green Digital Twins, this is a very perfect version. If you create a digital copy, a twin, of your product, of whatever type of material type of thing you're working with in a company and just color it a bit green in remark of looking ⁓ into maybe the weight. If you reduce weight, do a digital twin without even producing something, you can maybe lower weight for a transport of a good. If you repairability already upfront, you can support the longevity of a product. If you just have an awareness, of which components are being used in a final product, you're even able to already predict the recyclability of that product. All of that are definitely a lot of things where digital can support sustainability and the other way around, where sustainability needs to have a closer look into the digital world and ensuring that digital is not increasing the issues and the problems, but helping them and supporting.

Gael Duez (33:09)

You know, a few weeks ago, had a Letitia Bornes, a researcher on digital sustainability and one of the good experts of rebound effect. And when I was listening to you after having listened to her, I'm sort of having mixed feelings about it because, I mean, on paper, what you describe is flawless. I mean, and I love the butterfly example, by the way. But what has been happening over time is that every time digital enhance or improved processes, reduced waste, reduced energy consumption and so on, some sort of rebound effects happen, which most of the time cancel out the gains. And this is always where I'm a bit cautious. Like I would love to deploy what you're describing, like a word where IT and AI and so on would purely focus on reducing creating a more livable planet But this is not what has happened most of the time. It's a nuanced world and I don't want to be oversimplifying here. How do you deal with it? How do you create the conditions where what you describe will actually happen rather than having this crazy rebound effect like, it's more efficient by 50%. So let's spend 70 % more on it to gain new customers markets.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (34:34)

And that's a very concrete danger I do see as well. That's without any doubt. And the more efficient we will get, let's now follow maybe the predictions of the big corporates, the tech giants from the US who are currently now predicting that AI will solve most of the issues. AI will increase the technology which is being required for carbon capture and storage. AI will help us for fusion reactor development and all that things. So they make us feel that

Gael Duez (34:44)

Thank you.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (35:00)

AI and digital will solve all the world's issues and we can just lean back and keep going than what we've done already the last 100 years. And this is the complete opposite of what it should be. And I agree with you. So there is definitely a huge risk that there is rebound effects in certain other areas. And that's even more showing the importance of people like us who are aware. And it's all with awareness. It all comes with transparency and with understanding what the outcome is and that we always pay a price.

Gael Duez (35:05)

Yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (35:29)

I think, and now let's just maybe circle into a bit of another angle. So far, we've kept it mostly in the environmental and technological aspects. maybe a bit increase the focus on the social component and meaning on us, human beings. If you take the amount of people with mental health issues and depression at the moment, which is massively increasing, mostly due to the pressure which we face, mostly due to all that always on things with social media. And if you just take all of that, think people are getting more and more aware, well, there might be an outcome with what I do each day and there might be a price I have to pay for. And that's exactly what we need to be aware of. If we use digital, if we use AI, if we use technology, it is not what the ones producing it and making the most money and billions out of that is trying to sell us. It comes with a price. That price is something which we have to bring up even more on the agendas and why it needs to have collaboration, why it needs to have NGOs. Even if in the US, for example, NGOs are not that famous anymore and Trump is wiping off kind of financial support for them, we need them. We need to have people who are independent, who are not money driven, but who are driven from values, from common good, which are interested in changing the world. Are they the ones to answer all of the world's questions? No, they are not. It's a balance between. And that brings me back to my own personal brand, to that climate activist in a suit idea. It needs to have a balance between both worlds. And that comes again, repeating that with the awareness of what is the price and what is the outcome we can get and finding a right balance in reducing the risk of any kind of bouncing back into then doing even more and even doubling than maybe the outcome.

Gael Duez (37:12)

And that's absolutely right. And you mentioned two things that actually would like to get a bit of a highlight from you, which is the price we pay for AI. And I think the example you took was excellent. And you mentioned the NGO and I briefly mentioned in the introduction that you're the chief sustainability officer of sustainableit.org. So for those who are not familiar with sustainableit.org, I would say that this is an NGO who focuses mostly on IT executives such as CIO and CTO How do you help them with your CSO hat future readiness and also to push back this AI frenzy with this sort of fear of missing out the syndrome that we are facing to take a balanced decision.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (38:01)

Yeah, thank you very much for that question. So maybe for those not knowing me, I'm working full time in my own company for Heartprint which is my paid job, my day to day job, which is paying the soup on the table for my three kids and for my wife and the family at home here. And then they do have ⁓ a side job, is pro bono for sustainableit.org. Sustainableit.org, exactly as I explained it, was found about three years ago in the US. It's a classical NGO, no commercial interest, no financial interest. The only thing we get financially is the fees from the members, which are in the meantime 135, mostly exactly as I said, big stock listed companies from all across the world. And what the initial idea in nutshell was all about is in defining standards and in just joining a group of people who are interested in doing the same and speaking up with one voice towards those who are trying to fool us. So that was a bit of the initial idea, because if you started ⁓ five years ago, in requesting maybe carbon footprint from hyperscalers, you got either no answer or completely hidden type of an answer without any value. And that was something which started the idea in defining sustainable standards in IT and by IT increasing the pressure with speaking out of one voice. And in the meantime, it just got developed. We've got changed a bit of the focus to AI and now we are defining currently together with roughly 50 people from such kind of companies and member companies, but as well supported by science, by the UN Global Digital Compact, by World Bank and certain others, what is responsibility in AI and what does it mean as a standard. And this creates currently guidelines and this creates white papers and a bit of a framework which is being released in roughly three weeks, so end of June. And the idea here is to… Again, define a standard which currently only has certain angles and certain local aspects. So there is, for example, the European AI Act, which got defined about two years ago. But this is, first of all, not comprehensive. There's very little in it, which is on environmental aspects, for example, water consumption and stuff. On the other side, it's European and it doesn't have a global reach. And so therefore, what we try to do here is in defining that things. And my job there is in supporting the board as a member of the board in adjusting then maybe strategic angles to take as an NGO as a whole. as you can clearly guess already, so the US headquartered NGOs are quite heavy under pressure at the moment. So if you're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, which plays a major role, if you go in ethics, for example, for AI, as well in standards for sustainability, this is quite difficult at the moment for all the US people. In the board and even for us being an US headquartered NGO. So what we're trying at the moment is to change a bit of the pressure more to European sides. We are creating a newly adjusted European advisory board and we are then trying to push things more from that angle because we can. We are still in the democratic freedom to talk openly about things and we are still able to just push things further in… regard of diversity aspects.

Gael Duez (41:14)

And in Europe, science is not a gross word. So we can keep on talking about it on fact-based rather than belief-based. now circling back, so thanks a lot for all these explanations about the symbol.it.org and how also it helps us understand better what is at stake at the moment with the US. With your members, and maybe it's too early for you to answer, but how do you advise them to embrace AI wisely. Mean, do you have some concrete example or is it too early to say?

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (41:48)

No, I can at least give some maybe one, two ideas into that aspect here as well. So what it all comes up with, and by the way, this will be promoted then as well and will be opened up to public as well with very concrete guidelines and practical how to start things and very practical examples from the big companies which are members of Sustainable IT. But one of the things is, again, transparency. So if I, and this is an example. Where German Railway, Deutsche Bahn, example, started already about a year ago or something. The usage of mostly then the on-prem AI solutions, so none of the big corporates is using public ChatGPT or Mistral or anything else. They do have their own on-prem solutions for data privacy reasons, which do have then with an API for sure the large language models of big solutions on the market or copilot and everything else but they still have their own on-prem solutions. That means they do have an opportunity to influence how it's been displayed. And one of the things Deutsche Bahn did was displaying after a prompt what was the energy consumption caused by that prompt. if anyone from Deutsche Bahn is using in their internal AI system ⁓ their large language model to create maybe the next PowerPoint slides or just an email to the next manager maybe asking for a celery raise, then there is an immediate response which just shows the prompt you just used did cause 25 kilowatt hours of energy use. So that is one of the very concrete examples which I would propose if you're in a big corporate surrounding to just come up with a bit more of understanding and awareness. And what it requires then, and this is maybe a next example, if you're working in a smaller surrounding just using AI from public offerings ⁓ in maybe paid options like OpenAI, Mistral, with Luchette or anything else, then it is again on training. So don't hand it to your colleagues. Don't hand it to your employees just completely without guidance, without awareness, without a training. They need to understand what the outcome is all about. they need to understand sometimes a small language model would do and sometimes even a Google search would do. Well, maybe a bad example because Google just wiped off the standard Google search and replaced it with AI.

Gael Duez (44:04)

Yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (44:07)

What I was going to say is you need to be, again, aware. And that awareness could either come with transparently showing it. If you do have the ability, if you don't, start things with a training. now maybe to those who are just listening, say, well, we still don't use AI within the company. I bet you do. You just don't know about it. And you just don't maybe want to know about it. Because if you, as a company leader, are not providing solutions for your employees, they'll find their own ones. And I mean, it's very easy to register for the full free versions or just pay, I don't know, $10 or $15 per month for Le Chet or anything else just on your private account and still use it in the company surrounding. And I am sure in most of the companies, a lot of people are using already AI, even if there is no official answer, no official provided service form from the company perspective. So training, training, training.

Gael Duez (45:00)

I've never thought about shadow AI the same way as shadow IT, but actually it makes total sense. But thanks a lot for this. And thanks a lot for providing this concrete examples and the feedback from your position at sustainableit.org. I think we are out a bit of time now.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (45:05)

Yeah. So do we.

Gael Duez (45:21)

Let's finish with a positive piece of news. What is according to you? ⁓ The news that you got recently that uplifted you the most. can be in sustainability in general, or it can be in IT sustainability more specifically. Feel free to pick the one you

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (45:40)

Very good question. So I would like to maybe turn the angle again a bit into something probably unexpected, and this is whales. ⁓ So a very good friend of mine, is Frauke Fischer. She is a biodiversity expert from the university in Germany. And she wrote a book which is in German, Walmacht Wetter, or translated version, ⁓ whale is causing weather. And if you're interested in reading that book, I can highly recommend. It's something which explains how whales are influencing weather during their lifetimes and once they die. one of the positive news I recently read is due to whale protection, which is in most of the countries in the meantime a common thing, there is only very little exceptions, but due to whale protection, the number of big whales and blue whales and the whale population in general just got… way, way, way better than what it used to be and what it looked like and way better than what got expected. And this is, to me, just an example if we really want to make things happen, if we are really willing in changing something and the transformation is then understood from the majority of people. If there even is a couple of people declining or still not believing in things, if the majority is following that path, we are able to make things happen and influencing in a positive way. And this is exactly what I would like to maybe use as a closing remark for myself.

Gael Duez (47:04)

I love it, especially because I go whale watching every year. That's the sort of ritual before going back to school because in Réunion Island, that's the perfect timing. But, I love it.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (47:17)

I didn't even know about that. You're well watching. at that. So without speaking about it upfront, I touched something which is close to you as well. I love that.

Gael Duez (47:24)

Excellent. Well, Thanks a lot, Rainer, for joining the show today. And I'm really looking forward to hearing you on stage at Green IO Munich. And thanks a lot for joining there as very happy.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (47:36)

Thank you very much, for having me. It was a great pleasure talking to you and looking forward seeing you soon.

Gaël Duez (47:41)

Thank you for listening to this Green IO episode. Because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green IO, all the references mentioned in this episode, as well as the full transcript, are in the show notes. You can find these notes on your favorite podcast platform and, of course, on our website, greenio.tech. If you enjoyed this interview, please take 30 seconds to give us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Sharing this episode on social media or directly with other responsible technologists is also a good idea to provide them with inspiration. You got the point, being an independent media, we rely mostly on you to get more listeners.

In our next episode, we will welcome Anita Schuttler, a well-known IT sustainability expert involved in many NGOs to talk about the latest developments in green software engineering. By the way, Green IO is a podcast and much more. So visit greenio.tech to subscribe to our free monthly newsletter, read the latest articles on our blog and check the conferences we organize across the globe. Munich was a huge success last week and the next one is in London on September 23rd and 24th.

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67 episodes

#Tech #Gaël Duez #Sustainability #Digital #Carbon Footprint #Climate Change #Low Carbon #Science #Non-Profit #Geology #Business #Green

#60 Why Tech companies should not deprioritize future readiness with Rainer Karcher

Green IO

published 2M ago

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Hmmm there seems to be a problem fetching this series right now. Last successful fetch was on July 08, 2025 05:18 (1M ago)

“Climate activist in a suit”.

This is how Rainer Karcher describes himself.

Why ESG has nothing to with “saving the planet”
3 tips to tackle the end of the month vs end-of-the world dilemma
Embracing a global perspective on ESG and why the current backlash is a western world only issue
Knowing the price we pay for AI and how to avoid rebound effect
The challenge with shadow AI and why training is pivotal

And yes they talked about whales also and many more things!

BTW, Rainer will also be one of our 2 keynote speakers at Green IO Munich next week where he will wrap-up the day after having represented SustainableIT.org on the NGO panel as their CSO.

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Learn more about our guest and connect:

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Rainer’s sources and other references mentioned in this episode

Transcript (auto-generated)

Gaël Duez (00:00)

Gaël Duez (00:27)

Gael Duez (01:40)

Welcome, Rainer. Thanks a lot for joining Green IO today.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (01:44)

Gael Duez (02:01)

Yeah, thanks a lot for this and you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders. I know that because you're playing home. So we expect a lot from you.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (02:08)

And you can, you can. I'm not sure whether I'm able to fulfill, but I'm very much looking forward to at least giving a bit of thoughts and sharing my mind.

Gael Duez (02:13)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (02:58)

Gael Duez (06:10)

And how do you differentiate in that case ESG from, I would say, risk management that every good company should have put in place?

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (06:22)

Gael Duez (09:19)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (10:23)

Gael Duez (11:41)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (12:31)

Gael Duez (16:55)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (17:46)

I'm enjoying it lot. I hope that keeps it interesting for the listeners. That's the only thing we would like to get.

Gael Duez (17:56)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (19:08)

Gael Duez (19:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (19:26)

Gael Duez (27:28)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (28:36)

Gael Duez (33:09)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (34:34)

Gael Duez (34:44)

Thank you.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (35:00)

Gael Duez (35:05)

Yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (35:29)

Gael Duez (37:12)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (38:01)

Gael Duez (41:14)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (41:48)

Gael Duez (44:04)

Yeah.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (44:07)

Gael Duez (45:00)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (45:05)

Yeah. So do we.

Gael Duez (45:21)

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (45:40)

Gael Duez (47:04)

I love it, especially because I go whale watching every year. That's the sort of ritual before going back to school because in Réunion Island, that's the perfect timing. But, I love it.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (47:17)

I didn't even know about that. You're well watching. at that. So without speaking about it upfront, I touched something which is close to you as well. I love that.

Gael Duez (47:24)

Excellent. Well, Thanks a lot, Rainer, for joining the show today. And I'm really looking forward to hearing you on stage at Green IO Munich. And thanks a lot for joining there as very happy.

Rainer (Heartprint GmbH) (47:36)

Thank you very much, for having me. It was a great pleasure talking to you and looking forward seeing you soon.

Gaël Duez (47:41)

67 episodes

#Tech #Gaël Duez #Sustainability #Digital #Carbon Footprint #Climate Change #Low Carbon #Science #Non-Profit #Geology #Business #Green

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#60 Why Tech companies should not deprioritize future readiness with Rainer Karcher

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#60 Why Tech companies should not deprioritize future readiness with Rainer Karcher